Storyline
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
Directors
Cast
Kate Winslet, Sylvester Groth, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Matthias Habich, Jürgen Tarrach, Bruno Ganz, Heike Hanold-Lynch, Lena Olin, Jeanette Hain, Hannah Herzsprung, Karoline Herfurth, Volker Bruch, Alexandra Maria Lara, Fabian Busch, Fabian Busch, Vijessna Ferkic, Susanne Lothar, Burghart Klaußner, Florian Bartholomäi, Moritz Grove, Kirsten Block, Margarita Broich, Marie Gruber, Martin Brambach, Carmen-Maja Antoni, Linda Bassett
Trailer
Reviews
75
The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama.
70
An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season.
67
The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie.
63
Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."
60
Newsweek
The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.
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